Storytime: Squirrel Staredown

"Welcome back, Ginny!" you all cry happily! Yes, I know. I know. But I'm here now. Everything is going to be alright.

Allow me to regale you with an epic saga that I like to call "The Squirrel Staredown." This all went down last year, but I recounted it to someone yesterday and thought you crowd of nonexistent followers of my blog would like to hear it. So here goes.

---

To set the scene - I had just finished taking a German test. In that class, as soon as we finished the test we were allowed to leave. That chapter I happened to be particularly prepared for, so I finished in about fifteen minutes and went to leave the building. I step outside of the doors and there's no one there, since everyone is in class - except for a squirrel, sitting on the wall.

Now, it is my habit when spotting wild animals (as much as a squirrel on a college campus can really be called 'wild') to meet their eyes and stare at them rudely until they run away. I...I just do. Shh.

So I'm staring at this squirrel, and he is not backing down. He's staring right back at me like I just insulted his mother or something. I am locked in a staring contest with this squirrel for...probably just under a minute. A long time. At this point, I'm getting bored, so I decide to walk away - but I can't stop staring at the squirrel, because that would be admitting defeat. And I refuse to lose a staredown with a rodent who is literally the size of my calf. So I start walking while maintaining eye contact with the squirrel - and the thing paces me down the wall.

This annoys me, so I keep walking until I reach the end of the wall. The thought going through my head is "Ha! When I reach the end of the wall, he'll have to stop pacing me, and I'll win!" At the end of the wall, there's a trash can. The squirrel climbs on top of it and then sticks his head into the opening of the trash can, like he's gonna get himself some lunch or something. This strikes me as unacceptable for some reason. That squirrel should not be fishing through our trash! To scare him off, I take a step forward. A threatening step.

The squirrel hops down off the trash can and takes a step towards ME. Now, keep in mind, I am not afraid of squirrels. They're little and scared and...well, they're rodents. You know. But when an angry squirrel takes a pace TOWARDS you, it's generally not wise to stick around and share some communicable diseases with him. So I take a step /back/ (not in fear! NOT IN FEAR. In...um, in self defense. Self preservation.) - right into another student from my German class, who's leaving the building.

He says, predictably, "What are you doing?" I begin to explain, saying something totally rational like "There was this squirrel, and it was threatening me-" and then I turn around to point to the squirrel...which has conveniently disappeared.

And that, children, is the story of how Ginny had a staredown with a squirrel, and lost, ending in not only defeat, but humiliation. Come back next week for another amusing story featuring Schadenfreude!